


And the Little One Said, 'Move Over'

by Corycides



Series: Tumbling On [9]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:24:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you sleep?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> blondie1128 prompted: Bass/charlie, sharing a bed would be awesome!

There was one bedroll, stained and stinking. Monroe shook it out and raised an eyebrow. ‘No wonder he was pissed I’d killed the old man,’ he muttered. Charlie glared at him. It was easier - it felt better - to be angry than guilty, to hate him instead of think about everyone she was letting down.

‘I know you don’t have any,’ she said. ‘But people do get upset when their friends die.’

He glanced around at her again. ‘I have friends.’

‘Name one.’

‘Miles.’

‘Name two.’

He opened his mouth, closed it and scratched the back of his head. ‘Jeremy.’

‘...you mean Captain Baker? It doesn’t count if they’re dead. It really, really doesn’t count if you killed them.’

Monroe tossed the bedroll up onto the jockey box and went back to sorting the rest of the loot, tossing keepsakes and treasures to the side of the road with a sneer. ‘How many friends do you have then?’

‘Nora.’ The name still hurt, loneliness and regret and everything else wadded up in one big, choking wad of rags in her throat. It was how pointless it had turned out to be, how everyone’s death turned out to be. No one died ever died a hero, no one’s death ever actually accomplished anything.

‘Doesn’t count if they’re dead,’ Monroe said.

Except maybe his. His death would accomplish a lot, Charlie was sure of it. She glared at his back, and he ignored her. The contents of the flask got emptied out - after a taste - and the flask went in his pocket. He flipped a wrinkled old skin mag open, cocking his head to the side as the centrefold flapped open. Charlie got an eyeful of wet pink flesh and knots and...people before the blackout really made sex complicated.

‘Oh, no way,’ Charlie said, snatching it off him. The pages were stiff and crinkly. She tossed it into the long grass. ‘I’m not sitting listening to you fumble at yourself in the night.’

He looked her up and down, lewdly lingering at her boobs and hips. ‘I’m going to jerk off, Charlotte. I’ll just have to think of something else.’

Charlie just turned her back on him and went to check on the horses. Behind her Monroe laughed. ‘Oh yeah, that’ll work,’ he said. Charlie made a rude gesture back at him.

They stopped and scrubbed the bedroll out at the first stream they came across, tying it across the back of the wagon to dry. It was dry by the time they stopped for the night - but it was two freezing nights before Charlie could make herself crawl into with him.

‘If you were a gentleman, you’d give it to me,’ she muttered, squirming down into the tight confines of oilcloth and down. Her ass skimmed his hip, bumped his thighs, but he didn’t say anything about that.

‘You said I was a sociopath, now you think I’m a gentleman? Make up your mind.’

‘I said “if”.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’re not my type, and Miles would kill me.’

Charlie snorted at him, fidgeting about to try and get as comfortable - and far from him - as she could manage. ‘Don’t try and make screwing you sound like a good idea.’

They settled on lying back to back, Charlie uncomfortably aware of the heavy, warm line of his back against hers and the odd idea that the bare feet against her’s belonged to General Monroe of the Monroe Republic. Who thought monsters had cold feet?

‘Stop wriggling,’ he said.

‘Stay on your own side, then.’

‘It’s a bedroll, there’s no sides.’

‘Yes there is, and you’re on mine.’

He sighed. ‘Stop being childish.’

She would have to twist around to glare at him, so she settled for snarling and jabbing back with her elbow. ‘Stay on your own side then.’

He didn’t move; she pretended he had.

It was oddly reassuring sleeping next to him, aware but never quite awake of his broken, paranoid sleep patterns. He slept like Miles, in shallow, quick bursts - never completely relaxed. She got used to it, to him. Sometimes, on the nights he pushed the horses on past safety in the darkness, Charlie would jolt awake on his shoulder, curled into his side like they were a courting couple during harvest. The first couple of times they’d snarled at each other, trading jabs and suspicion: he was copping a feel, she was trying to manipulate him. After a while it seemed pointless, though.

After wading through a river, both of them jumping down into the water and throwing their weight against the back of the wagon to jolt it over the ruts it had jammed in. Soaked to the skin and shivering, they stripped down to their underwear. At least, Charlie did. Monroe apparently didn’t believe in boxers.

‘Am I meant to be impressed?’ Charlie asked, wringing her hair out.

Monroe glanced down. ‘Right now? No.’

She rolled her eyes at him and scrambled into the bedroll, holding it open as she waited for him to finish towelling off and join her. For once he didn’t turn his back. He caught her hands and pulled them up, breathing on them and rubbing them between his hands.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You need your fingers.’

‘It’s Texas,’ she said, wriggling her fingers. ‘I’m not going to get frostbite.’

He just grunted. Eventually he stopped and Charlie supposed, at that point, they were just lying holding hands. She was too tired to start a fight about it.

‘Are we gonna fuck?’ she asked suddenly.

Monroe tucked his hand under her head, his palm serving as a pillow and fingers twisting through her hair. ‘Do you want to?’

She licked her lips, his eyes dropping to the swipe of her tongue with interest. ‘I...don’t want someone who cares about me. I get the people who care about me - that I care about - killed.’

‘There’s a short-list of people I care about,’ Monroe said. ‘You’re not on it.’

Charlie wriggled closer, her leg hooked over his thigh and her hand curled around the nape of his neck. His curls stuck up in ridiculous spikes around his face. His skin was still damp, but it was starting to warm up. ‘I won’t tell Miles if you don’t.’

He laughed soundlessly and rubbed his cheek against her arm, over the raised welt of scar tissue. ‘Funny thing, not the first time a girl’s said that to me.’

‘Maybe you should start fucking women then,’ she said, covering his mouth with her's to shut him up. She wasn't a kid, no matter what Miles or her mom though. She was 22, she'd fought in a war - if Monroe said something stupid she'd not get laid tonight.

He let her kiss him and touch him, fingers tracing the hard play of muscle under tanned skin. She could feel the heat of bruises, old and new, against her fingertips and the rough scatter shot of scar tissue along the back of his thigh and over the firm curve of his ass.

‘Running away?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Bomb went off under our car. Miles dragged me out.’

She swallowed. ‘He should have left you.’

His hand twisted in her hair, tugging her head back. Charlie didn’t know what it said about her that it was that - his knuckles against the back of her skull, the tendons in her neck tight, the cold, empty threat in his voice - that turned wet to aching, sopping want. ‘Remember what I said about you not having the right to talk to me like that?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Yeah? I'm waiting.'

Charlie couldn't help laughing, the blurt of unexpected mirth startling them both. She squirmed against him, his cock sliding between wet thighs, and shoved at his shoulders until he rolled onto his back. The idea was that she'd be in charge, but somehow it ended up being Monroe. His hands on her hips, holding her back, and mouth on her breasts, teeth pinching her nipple and tongue laving it until she whined and begged for him.

She could feel his smirk against her skin.

'Take it back,' he told her.

She braced her arm on his shoulder and blinked dazedly at him. Her hips circled against his, smearing wet over his stomach. 'What?'

'That I'm a sociopath.'

She bit his lower lip, tugging at it. 'It's part of your charm.'

'Say I'm not.'

'You're a monster.'

He grimaced, but took it as a win. His fingers tightened around her thighs, thumbs pressing against the hook of her hipbones, and he pulled her down hard. The width of him stretched her - a gasp spilling from her lips into his mouth - and shudders of pleasure itched through her.

They fucked slowly, like they cared. His mouth lingered on the splatter of wounds on her shoulder, an oddly gentle gesture that made her shiver. Kissing them better. She didn't want that, dragging his head back from for a rough kiss that was all mashed lips and the scrape of sharp, white teeth.

'Did you fuck that bounty hunter?' he asked, pulling her down until their hips were pressed together. He held her there, jaw clenching as she squirmed impatiently against. 'Is that why you wouldn't kill him.'

'We didn't need to kill him.'

'Not an answer.'

'None of your business.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kissmyasthma95 prompt: could you do miles/rachel sharing a bed?

 

‘It was your idea,’ Charlie said, pushing him out of the room. ‘We’re fine. I can deal with Monroe.’

That was what he was worried about. He glared over Charlie’s shoulder at Bass, mouthing ‘I will kill you’. Bass smirked and cocked his head to the side, checking out Charlie’s ass. It was just to piss Miles off. Probably.

‘Out!’ Charlie said, shoving him past the threshold and slamming the door in his face.

Miles glared at the scarred wood. He had not thought this idea through. At all. He rubbed his hand over his face - still strange to have his fingers working again - and headed back downstairs. Tanner was slouched out on the huge half-bed, one of his bruised girls tucked under his arm. Sometimes Miles wondered if the proliferation of assholes in his life was something he should worry about.

After an hour’s worth of haggling he secured the four of them passage through the mountains on one of the caravans, toasting the agreement with a shot of sour rum. Tanner had worked his hand down the front of his girl’s skirt, his mouth gone slack and lustful.

‘I would offer you one of my girl’s to...entertain you...but you have your blonde MILF,’ he said. ‘You and Monroe ever...share?’

He waggled his eyebrows. Miles peeled his lips back in something that - to a drunk asshole - might pass for a smile. ‘Not for a while,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow, Tanner.’

The girl winced, squirming at the rough grope of callused fingers, and Tanner reached for the bottle, not bothering with a glass as he poured the booze down his throat. ‘Still say you can get a discount on travel if you give me one of your girls.’

‘They’d kill you, Tanner,’ Miles said.

He left the idiot chuckling like he’d made a joke and headed back up to his room. Rachel was already in bed, her hair loose and wavy over her shoulders and a notebook propped open on her knees. The sight of her gave Miles a pang in his chest, the ache of wasted years and lost opportunities. Would this have been what it was like? If he’d told the truth in that airport?

Yeah, he thought tiredly. Him staggering in with booze on his breath and Rachel looking like at him like he was a stranger. It would probably have been just like this.

‘Did he agree?’ she asked, closing the notebook around her pen. Her mouth was still pinched with anger over the earlier argument about their sleeping arrangements.

‘Yeah,’ Miles said. He sat down on the small, white chair and bent over to unlace his boots. ‘We leave tomorrow. Bass won’t do anything.’

‘Charlie would castrate him if he tried,’ Rachel said. She’d never been on the receiving end of Bass trying to be nice, though. Had she? Miles got the familiar sick twist in his stomach that happened everytime he thought about what had happened after he left. He could ask, but he didn’t want to know.

‘I’ll take the floor,’ he said.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Rachel said. ‘You won’t be able to walk tomorrow, never mind fight.’

‘Rachel.’

She put her notebook down and pushed the blankets back. ‘Just come to bed.’

Miles hesitated. The last time she’d seen him naked, he was in his twenties and a marine. He was still fit - for his age, but… Rachel rolled her eyes at him ‘Neither of us are high and tight anymore, Miles,’ she said. Her voice softened. ‘I spend a long time sleeping alone. Come to bed.’

He striped and crawled into bed next to her, trying to pretend he wasn’t holding his stomach in, and Rachel, mouth twitching, turned the lantern down. They lay in awkward silence. This was the first time they’d been alone since his not-quite-a-deathbed confession, but he didn’t know what to do. Admitting he’d been wrong didn’t erase the twenty years since. They’d both loved other people, hurt each other and others, made mistakes and got some things right. All of that lay down the middle of the bed like a chastity pillow, nudging them both to the sides.

‘Should we be worried about Bass and Charlie?’ Rachel asked in the dark.

‘Don’t know,’ Miles admitted. ‘It’s not the sex...’

‘It better not be,’ Rachel muttered.

‘Bass needs someone,’ Miles said. ‘It was always me. I don’t know if it is now. If he’s looking to Charlie to fill that void..it’ll drown her one day, but it’s better than the alternative.’

A narrow hand found his under the blankets, fingers twisting through his. Last time he’d held her hand, touched her like this instead of from necessity, her fingers had been soft and her nails perfectly manicured. Now they were dry, her fingertips cracked and cuticles peeling. Real.

‘I don’t want him influencing her.’

‘Maybe she’ll influence him?’ Miles said, letting that forlorn hope out to flop weakly into the world.

‘That’s not her job,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s not Charlie’s responsibility.’

‘Do you hate him?’

‘Yes.’

Her voice was cold enough to chill him, that terrifying empty madness he saw in her sometimes loose in the word.

‘Do you hate me?’

‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s why I have to hate him so much.’

He lifted their linked hands and kissed her knuckles, tasting lantern oil and sweat and leather on her skin. ‘What are we?’

‘Trying.’

The bed creaked as she shifted towards him. The first kiss was hesitant and then they forgot the twenty years since the last time they’d been this...clean, this honest with each other. Miles relearnt her curves under the sheets, kissing her scars into his memory, and she wrapped her long legs around him. They made love with sweet desperation - like it might be the first time; like it might be the last time.


End file.
